


A night with the Champions

by rubarbe9



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Humor, Light-Hearted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 10:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10988721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubarbe9/pseuds/rubarbe9
Summary: Four Triwizard Champions, a locked room and a full night until they can be left out.





	A night with the Champions

**Author's Note:**

# A night with the Champions

Viktor Krum was the last one to enter the room. They had all received a message from one of their schoolmates requiring their presence for Tournament business. So here they were, in this out-of-the-way cosy sitting room, waiting for an official to show up.

Fleur Delacour and Harry were sharing a large couch next to the fire, facing two squat armchairs. Cedric had settled in one of those, leaving only one seat open for the Bulgarian Seeker. In the warm glow of the fireplace and the candles, the thick plush carpet covering the entire floor and multiple cushions spread about gave the room a homey feeling.

After the necessary greetings, the four had settled into a bored silence. They kept glancing at each other, but the atmosphere was not tense like it would have been before the Second Task: they had no need to check the competition or impress their opponents, they all knew that they each deserved their spot.

 

Cedric, the easy-going one of the lot, was the first to get impatient with the stand-still. Or maybe he had something else to go back to and could not wait to be done with whatever Barty had cooked up this time.

"So, anyone has information? What do they need us for?"

Harry and Viktor shrugged, drawing an irritated glare from Fleur.

"No, ze message only said to meet 'ere."

"Maybe we got the wrong place?"

"Do you really think the four of us vould have got the same vrong place?"

"True, they are probably just late", sighed Cedric, laying back down against the backrest of his seat.

 

About fifteen minutes later, Fleur stood up and started to pace the room. Viktor had his eyes closed and his moving hands revealed that he was visualising Quidditch moves. Cedric and Harry were discussing Professor Moody's unconventional style of teaching in low tones.

"What iz dis?"

Fleur was pointing to an envelope on the stand next to the door. They had not noticed it when coming in because it had been hidden behind the open door. The word **Champions** was written on it in bold letters.

As Fleur did not appear to want to open it, Viktor got up and snatched the letter from the table. He made quick work of the Ministry seal and unfolded the parchment.

"Dear Champions, You have been gathered in this room as representatives of your schools and countries. Since the creation of the Tournament and in order to foster bonding between vizarding nations, it has been traditional for the three -nao four- Champions to spend a full day and night together protected from outside interferences. For reasons that have been lost, this ritual is not to be made public and all concerned are spelt by the Cup to keep the secret. The room vill have been locked ven the last one of you entered and vill only be opened again after exactly tventy-four hours. You vill find adequate sustenance in the buffet as vell as entertainment on the shelves. Do take advantage of this time to get closer to each other, it is vat it is for after all.

Sincerely,

Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation; Ludovic Bagman, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports"

"Great, just great!", Harry complained with his head between his hands.

"You English 'ave a strange 'umour. Ze one who did dis will be in trouble! I am leaving!"

Fleur strode to the door and grabbed the knob decisively. Her attempt was cut short when the handle refused to move one notch. She turned around and glared at her competitors, promising pain to the one responsible for the joke.

 

It was already past ten when they resolved to accept the situation. They had taken turns trying to pry the door open but it seemed impervious to both physical and magical means.

A quick search of the room had uncovered generous food supplies in a cupboard -the one the letter had pompously called a buffet- and a few board games, books and some painting material on the shelves in a corner of the room. Viktor had remarked that whoever had put those together was an idiot, as they had apparently forgotten to include anything to paint on. Now they were sprawled all over the furniture, grumbling about the stupidity of the Ministry and adults in general, a Butterbeer in hand.

"I 'ave 'eard that M. Bagman 'as trouble wiz the Goblins..."

"Yes, my father says they regularly come to the Ministry to pressure him. There's also talk of an internal investigation about some fraudulent gambling at the World Cup that he might have been a part of..."

"Really? Why did they pick him for the Tournament then?"

"I guess it is the same as in my country, you cannot fire someone vorking for the Ministry vithout good cause. And they said they have been preparing for a long time."

"My fazer always say dat every politician 'as at least one vice. 'is is obviously money"

The teens laughed.

"He's not the only one, have you seen how Fudge is sucking up to Malfoy? I mean, you and Viktor wouldn't know about it, but in my Second Year a friend of mine and I nearly died because of the wealthy git. But he didn't even get kicked out of the Board of Governors!"

"Malfoy, is dat the elegant blond Lord?"

"Elegant, sure. Snobbish and pretentious as hell too! He vos there at the Vorld Cup. Your Minister vos eating in his hand. Is that how you say?"

Cedric seemed a bit put out by the criticism of their government head.

"Yes, it is. M. Malfoy is highly respected in Britain, and he is funding quite a lot of Ministry-based structured, so it is expected that Fudge defers to him..."

"But dat's terrible! It is ze basics of dictatorship! And people do not protest?"

Fleur was outraged. Harry was a bit surprised that she felt so strongly about it, but he did remember from his History lessons in primary school that the French had beheaded their king and a lot of lords and ladies in a big revolution. Cedric, however, was not taking her reaction too well.

"Don't be a hypocrite, it isn't like France is any better! Else, how come there are only children from wealthy families in your school's delegation?"

"Where did you get dat from? It is completely untrue!"

"Really? I didn't notice French people all being dressed in high-quality satin last time I went to Paris!"

Harry and Viktor shared a glance, uncomfortable with the conflict growing between the other two.

" _Our Minitry_ paid for our uniforms as representatives, as well as all ze ozer costs linked to ze Tournament. Precizely so no student would be left behind because zey could not afford it or didn't feel comfortable participating in second-hand clothes!"

A tensed silence followed her declaration. Cedric was red in embarrassment rather than anger now. He mumbled an apology. Harry took pity on him and grabbed a deck of card from the pile of things they had pilfered from around the room, intent to change the subject.

"So, anyone knows how to play those?"

After a quick glance at the package, Viktor negated: "They are divination cards, Harry, ve cannot play vith them."

That had Fleur perking up.

"Divination cards? Let me see!"

Groaning, Harry handed her the box. She would probably get on well with Lavender and Parvati if she showed that level of enthusiasm for Divination. Cedric and Viktor apparently shared the Gryffindor's distaste for the field, if their bewildered stares at their only feminine member were to be believed.

"Oh, come off it boys! Divination is crap and we all know it. But we can play tarot with deeze, it is a tarot _de Marseille_!"

" _Play_ tarot? Like, try to invent the most ridiculous predictions with the cards?"

Harry chuckled at that. That was a game he and Ron were pretty good at.

"No, stupid. It's a card game. Like Exploding Snaps but you 'ave to sink like chess. Muggles play it."

Fleur then proceeded to introduce her companions to the intricacies of four-player tarot.

 

As it turned out, Viktor knew a similar game from Romania that he played with his teammates, so he wasn't half bad. Fleur won the most points, the professional Seeker coming a close second. Cedric and Harry were tying in for the last place until Harry ended up scoring in the last game because his Hogwarts counterpart had once again gotten stuck with Death as his only trump. Despite their convictions on Divination, the teens could not help but be a bit worried about the improbable draws of the Hufflepuff champion... When Cedric had complained about having only one trump in his hand for two rounds in a row, Fleur had asked about the symbols on the cards in fun. The joke had seemed even better when Cedric had revealed it had been Death the two times. But their parodies of phoney seers had turned sour a few hands later, as Cedric's draw once again contained the gloomy card as its only trump. For the rest of the game, they had carefully counted the boy's cards. The combination had appeared for the fourth time and they had non-verbally agreed that it was time to stop. While it was not absolutely impossible, the occurrence was still improbable enough to freak them out.

 

It was late, later than any one of them usually went to sleep at, and they kept yawning their jaws off, but they were engaged in too passionate a discussion to think about bed. The debate had started on a quite mundane exchange on their respective partners at the Yule Ball. From there, Cedric had revealed that while he quite liked Cho, if it had not been an official event he would have taken his Quidditch teammate Herbert Fleet. Harry had taken the opportunity to ask what the position of the Wizarding World on homosexuality was, something he had been quite curious about for some time but had never had the opportunity to question anyone about.Somehow, they had ended debating the pros and cons of the stances of their respective countries on the subjects. France was the more liberal of the lot: the government had decreed some fifty years ago that love and sex where nobody business and a small majority of society stood firmly behind them. The rest of the population also held strong views on the question, rooted in the obsolete belief that reproduction ought to be the only driving force of any sexual relationship. The tension on the subject was

Somehow, they had ended debating the pros and cons of the stances of their respective countries on the subjects. France was the more liberal of the lot: the government had decreed some fifty years ago that love and sex where nobody business and a small majority of society stood firmly behind them. The rest of the population also held strong views on the question, rooted in the obsolete belief that reproduction ought to be the only driving force of any sexual relationship. The tension on the subject was acute and now that the subject was also dividing the Muggle population, hate crimes were on the rise.Cedric was still of the opinion that it was better than the blood-status-driven policy of the British Ministry, which was that lovers on the side did not matter but that magic wielders had the responsibility to wed among the other sex and procreate. He was bisexual and he resented the fact that any man he fell in love with would never be able to occupy a more important place than his casual sexual partner in society's eye. Viktor had confessed that as a very heterosexual man, he had never paid much attention to the topic, but it was also not much of an issue in Bulgaria because the government did not care what people did in their home as long as they did not raise corpses. Social pressure was more constraining: most families expected their eldest to produce an heir, but the method did not matter as much as the

Cedric was still of the opinion that it was better than the blood-status-driven policy of the British Ministry, which was that lovers on the side did not matter but that magic wielders had the responsibility to wed among the other sex and procreate. He was bisexual and he resented the fact that any man he fell in love with would never be able to occupy a more important place than his casual sexual partner in society's eye.Viktor had confessed that as a very heterosexual man, he had never paid much attention to the topic, but it was also not much of an issue in Bulgaria because the government did not care what people did in their home as long as they did not raise corpses. Social pressure was more constraining: most families expected their eldest to produce an heir, but the method did not matter as much as the

Viktor had confessed that as a very heterosexual man, he had never paid much attention to the topic, but it was also not much of an issue in Bulgaria because the government did not care what people did in their home as long as they did not raise corpses. Social pressure was more constraining: most families expected their eldest to produce an heir, but the method did not matter as much as the _quality_ of the blood of the other parent. It was not unusual in their traditions to have _uncles_ and _aunts_ that were, in reality, stable lovers of one's parents so the family structure also allowed for a lot of freedom. Oblansk, the Minister, was bonded to a famous male singer and was raising his three children with their mother and her on-and-off lovers.When the three wizard-raised teenagers had wanted to know more about the way British Muggles perceived non-heterosexuality, Harry had had to admit that he did not know, apart from the fact that his family had been entirely against anything less than perfectly

When the three wizard-raised teenagers had wanted to know more about the way British Muggles perceived non-heterosexuality, Harry had had to admit that he did not know, apart from the fact that his family had been entirely against anything less than perfectly _normal_ , including magic, but that they were maybe not representative. He was actually rather pleasantly surprised that the Wizarding World was that open, even if a lot of problems remained. Considering how prejudiced it was regarding other things -namely blood status- he would not have expected it. According to Fleur and Viktor, though, Britain was especially stuck on the issue. Many other countries had started to integrate Muggleborns in their culture, while a few of the darker ones simply removed children from their Muggle families as soon as they showed signs of magical power and had them adopted into long-standing families. It was actually considered an honour in Bulgaria to be chosen for adoption, as it showed the Family Affairs Office recognised the value of the family.

At that point of the discussion, Harry let an unfortunate comment escape on how he would have given anything as a kid to be kidnapped from his relatives. The mood plummeted to an uncomfortable silence, as none of the older champions knew what to say to that. With an apologetic shrug, Harry went to grab the blankets piled on the shelf next to the door. He distributed them around and curled back up in the armchair he had appropriated during their card game. Quietly, they wished each other a good night and slipped into sleep.

 

In the morning, they played twenty questions. Twenty questions between a British Muggle-raised and a British, a Bulgarian and a French Wizard-raised teens turned out to be a bit ambitious. Even if they had agreed to only choose things that all of them knew about, how was Harry supposed to guess that they had _no_ idea what a helicopter was? They gave up when Fleur got fed up with their Quidditch-themed picks, which came up a lot because it was something the boys knew they had in common.

"So, Harry, since Muggles don't have Qvidditch, vat do they play?"

Wizarding Bulgaria was apparently very removed from its Muggle counterpart and Viktor appeared to hold the same fascination for all things Muggle that Muggle children did for magical stories. So he had decided to interrogate Harry on the subjects. Next to them, Fleur and Cedric chuckled over the chess board they had set up.

"Well, there is a lot of different team sports, and even more individual sports. I think the most famous ones are football and rugby. Both are a bit like Quidditch, players have to put a ball in the other side's goal, except they are running instead of flying, and there's no Snitch or Bulger. Also, rugby is a lot more violent than football because players can tackle each other and there is like group fights for the ball. I think. I've never really watched either, but we played football a lot in Physical Education. Then there are variations where you're ice skating, or swimming, or on a horse."

"Ice skating? Vat is that?"

"Err, it's when you put some sort of special shoes with a blade under it and you use it to move on ice."

"Really? How veird..."

"I've heard it's pretty fun. But difficult to learn. My cousin went once and he came back full of bruises."

"I vould like to try. Do you think they have them in my country?"

"Probably. You have snow several months a year, right?"

"Yes. Ve have a lot. You should visit some day, you vould like it I think. Ve don't have all this crazyness about light and dark magic. Ve respect magic, and ve only condemn those vo do dark things vith it."

"Sounds nice..."

The Seekers continued to discuss Muggle sports while Fleur demolished Cedric at chess. She offered a return match but he declined, a bit disgruntled about his heavy defeat.

 

Soon, the Champions found themselves bored. They grabbed some sandwiches in the cold compartment of the buffet and tried to figure out what to do next, but none of them was too knowledgeable about patience games. After all, it wasn't too often that one was locked in a room without much to do, when one had magic.

One of them most have had this exact thought because suddenly they were discussing how exactly they could entertain themselves with magic. The winning proposition was Harry's: as a child, he had never had the occasion to do creative activities outside of art class, so he had always wanted to be able to do whatever he wanted in a room, draw on the walls, pick absurd colours for furniture, carve stuff... So now they were going to wreck their temporary prison. And really, would could blame them? They had been locked up without warning and they were _bored_.

It turned into a competition. A quarter of the room each, and the craziest realisation would win. The place was a war zone. Not a single centimetre of space was left untouched and the entire rainbow was present several times over. Viktor's side had a Dark Forest inspiration, all the furniture had been transfigured, the wood into bark, the cushions into moss, the decorative elements into wildflowers... Next to it, Harry had gone wild with greys, brick red and metal, the shelves twisted into tormented structures and partially torn off the walls. It contrasted deeply with the cheerfulness of Cedric's corner: colour spots in bright colours pulsed and drifted over the walls, ceiling and floor, as well as the pieces of furniture which had been turned into bouncy versions of themselves. It gave an especially striking result on the couch as only half of it had received the bouncy treatment. The other half was integrated into the spiralling madness of Fleur's section. Hers was the most difficult one to apprehend. She had somehow blurred the limits between the constructions surfaces and with the furniture. Everything was moving, melting together in a vertiginous illusion. She had actually had to step away from it and into Viktor's forest part to avoid being caught into the unsoundness.

 

This was how the rescue team discovered them. Unknown to the teenagers, the letter they had found in the room had been a scam and their respective Heads had been alerted to their disappearance soon after curfew the previous night. Soon, the entire teaching body and two Squads of Aurors had been looking for them. A team of elite Ward-Breakers had been added to the mix when they had located the room but had been unable to enter it. It had been sealed tight, the spell work so skilled that it had taken the adults most of what was left of the initial twenty-four hours -not that they knew about it at the time- to unravel the protections. Finally, they had been able to unlock the door and rush in to save the teens that were probably being tortured or something of the sort.

Imagine their surprise when they found four chortling teenagers engaged in what looked to be a destructive artistic competition. Imagine the surprise of the Champions when the Aurors came hurtling in the middle of their mess, followed by their frantic Headmasters and Headmistress. And imagine the surprise of all of them when the scan of a vigilant Auror revealed the presence of an unexpected Animagus in the form of a beetle captured by a carnivorous lamp-plant!

 

They all met in Headmaster Dumbledore's office the next day for an explanation, after the students had been thoroughly checked by Madam Pomfrey and a Healer loaned by St Mungo.

"It appears that Ms. Skeeter was hoping for some... inappropriate behavior on your part, that she would have been able to report to her readers. She has some rather disturbing views on what young people get to when left to their own device..."

"Inappropriate behavior? If that was the case, why didn't she leave stronger alcohol or something? Did she expect us to suddenly get naked and perform the Niffler Song dance?"

The Headmasters and Headmistress of the different schools seemed highly uncomfortable. Professor Moody, on the other hand, believed in blunt truth.

"Close to, boy, close to. She hoped you boys would force yourself on Miss Delacour. Though she claimed that she would have settled for M. Krum grooming M. Potter."

"What?"

The simultaneous reaction of the teenagers echoed in the room.

"It seemed that she had convinced herself you were more interested in your own sex than the opposite, Viktor", added Headmaster Karkaroff, a point of disgust in his voice. The look he threw his student made it clear what he thought of the supposition. In contrast, the other adults looked quite appalled at the ex-Death Eater obvious prejudice.

The teenagers tried to hold their snickers in for a moment, but failed, and exploded in laughter. Adults really were blind...


End file.
